Reviews and Blog Posts: western

I will have to agree with one early critic of this work in that it was indeed a "strange masterpiece." I am currently working my way through all of Alejandro Jodorowsky's films after watching and loving the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune. Though not immediately entranced with this work the imagery, coloring, and symbolic...

by Walter Dean Myers

The Righteous Revenge of Artemis Bonner is one of the funniest novels for older children that I have read in a while. Fifteen-year-old Artemis Bonner sets out from New York City to *avenge the murder of his Uncle Ugly Ned Bonner and to find the gold mine he sketched from...

by Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian is an absolutely epic novel depicting the violence and depravity that accompanied America’s westward expansion. It brilliantly combines the conventions that make up the traditional Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west". In fact, literary critic Harold Bloom takes it a step further and notes that...

by Kirby Larson

I picked up Hattie Big Sky because I am not a huge fan of westerns and I thought I would try easing into the genre with a Young Adult novel. Hattie Big Sky could be called a more grown up version of Little House on the Prairie. Orphaned at a...

by Philipp Meyer

I do not give five stars lightly, but I'd rank this book up there with Larry Mc Murtry's Lonesome Dove. Let me start off by saying that I made an initial attempt to read the print book without much success. The first few pages left me a bit befuddled....

by John (John Edward) Williams

Seeking adventure and wilderness, Will Andrews, a New England tenderfoot sets out West with a stack of money and the name of a family friend located the small Kansas town of Butcher’s Crossing. The town serves as hub for buffalo hunters who are looking to get rich off the hides...

by Patrick deWitt

This tale introduces the Sisters brothers, a pair of hired guns sent to protect the interests of the Comodore during the California Gold Rush. As the first western I had ever read, I found myself pleasantly surprised. "The Sisters Brothers" was a quick paced book that kept me surprised time...

by Caroline Lawrence

After dispatching three deadly desperadoes in The Case of the Deadly Desperados, 12-year-old detective P.K. Pinkerton is again on the trail of the next villain to come to the hot-blooded Wild West town of Virginia.

Young Martha, a maid in a house of Soiled Doves, witnesses a murder and hires P.K....

by Robert B. Parker

I checked out this audiobook without realizing that it is the fourth and last in a series. Even though there were references to previous events that had taken place in earlier books, I was able to enjoy this as a stand-alone book.

by Kathleen Kent

Acclaimed historical fiction author Kathleen Kent sets her newest novel, The Outcasts, in her native state of Texas. This titillating tale of the west regales the good, the bad, and the ugly. Kent draws from historical records in her deft portrayal of period characters. In alternating chapters, we follow the...